


Heroes of the Resistance: Elena Strong - Giving Thanks

by brickhousewriter



Series: Heroes of the Resistance [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, I write close-canon fic, Thanksgiving, This is a ship-free zone (unless you're Gipsy Danger whacking a Kaiju), This is all original characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 13:10:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brickhousewriter/pseuds/brickhousewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I haven’t seen bread in a while."  Raleigh said.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>"Hong Kong.  We’re an open port.  No rationing." Herc replied, pointing around the table. "Potatoes, peas, sweet beans. Decent meatloaf.  Pass the potatoes."</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Forty years after the Operation Pitfall closed the Breach, one of the Shatterdome cooks tells her family stories about her years in the PPDC over Thanksgiving dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heroes of the Resistance: Elena Strong - Giving Thanks

**Author's Note:**

> I know that Thanksgiving is a curiously American holiday and that the Internet is an International space. But I think that it is useful to have one day a year spent with family, to count our blessings and reflect on what we have to be thankful for.
> 
> For those of you in the United States – Happy Thanksgiving. 
> 
> For the rest of the world, you can consider this a harvest story. I hope you enjoy it.

Elena Strong spotted her ten year-old grandson, Joshua, stealthily reaching towards the cookies cooling on the counter.  She grabbed the dishtowel hanging over her shoulder and flicked it swiftly at his bottom.  “Ah!  Cookie thief!”

Joshua yelped, but managed to snatch a cookie as he jumped out of the way.  He crammed it into his mouth whole before anyone could take it away from him.

When she heard her brother’s yelp, Elena’s granddaughter Lindsay drifted in from the living room, always happy to see her younger brother getting himself into trouble.

“You are _just_ like your grandfather!”  Elena said, lifting the cooling cookies and placing them on top of the refrigerator where Joshua couldn’t reach. “Must run in the family.”  Elena laughed at Joshua while he rubbed his bottom where she’d flicked him. He grinned at her, his cheeks swollen like a chipmunk, full of cookie.

“What do you mean gramma?”  Lindsey asked.

“Joshua reminds me of when I first met your grandfather.”

“You know mom,” Elena’s daughter Ginny, who was peeling a pile of apples for the pie, looked thoughtful, “I don’t think you’ve ever told me how you met dad.” 

“Yeah gramma, tell us how you met grampa!”  Lindsay said, leaning her elbows on the kitchen island.  Her mother handed her the knife and pushed the bowl of apples in her direction.  Lindsay pulled up a stool, perched on it, and started peeling.

“Well, it was back when I was in the PPDC.”

“Wait, you were in the Army?”

“Lindsay, don’t interrupt.”  Ginny scolded her daughter.  “Your grandmother wasn’t in the Army, she was in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. They’re not the same thing.”

“I know _that_ mom, we studied it in school.”  Lindsay rolled her eyes at her mother.  She was fourteen, and if it weren’t for the food, she wouldn’t be hanging out in the kitchen helping her mother and grandmother cooking Thanksgiving dinner. But since none of her friends could see her, she could tolerate being in the same room as her older relatives.  Besides, she liked gramma and grampa Strong better than her father’s relatives.

“I’ll bet you learned how to be a good cook in the Army huh gramma?”  It was hard to understand Joshua with his mouth still full of cookie.

Elena Strong wiped her hands on her apron and thought a moment before answering.  “Well, actually cooking for an army is kind of boring.  When you’re feeding thousands of people, you end up making a lot of the same thing.  And it’s easier to make simple meals.”

“Really?”  Lindsay couldn’t imagine her grandmother cooking boring food.  Gramma Strong was a _really_ good cook.  She looked forward to holiday meals at their house.

“Yes.  For example, for lunch I might have to make hundreds of grilled cheese sandwiches.  We’d start prepping for lunch first thing in the morning, before breakfast even.  The kitchen had these big sheet pans. And I’d spend a couple of hours putting slices of bread onto the pans.  Then laying out slices of cheese top of the bread, then another slice of bread on top.  Like this.”  She made a hand motion that would have looked familiar to a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas casino, as if she was flicking cards on a table.  “Then, just before mealtime, the cooks would start grilling all those sandwiches.  Hundreds of them, on huge grilles down in the kitchen.  Oh, it was so hot down there!” She flapped her apron at the memory, as if she could still feel the heat. “If we were making soup, I might spent all morning chopping and peeling vegetables.  Cases and cases of potatoes, carrots, celery.”

“Didn’t you have food processors back then?” Lindsay interrupted.

“Well, we did.  But we desperately needed the metal and machine parts for the War effort.  And people needed jobs.  So at the time, it made more sense to have people do some things by hand instead of using machines. During the War we didn’t have a lot of the things that you two kids take for granted.”

“I can’t imagine spending all day chopping vegetables!”  Lindsay said scornfully.

Her grandmother smiled at her, tolerant of her teenage attitude.  And amused because Lindsay was still peeling apples.  “The worst was the onions.  After you’ve chopped twenty pounds of onions, your hands smell like them for days. And then, just when you finally get the smell out, the same recipe would come up in the rotation again and you’d smell like onions all over again!  It’s amazing I ever got a date!”

“Speaking of dates, you were going to tell us how you met grampa?” Lindsay was the age where her favorite topic of conversation was romance.

“Well, I don’t know if your mother had told you, but back during the War Years, your grampa Eli and I were both in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps.  I met your grandfather when I was working as a cook for the PPDC.  One night I was working late.  We’d had a big party for something, I think it might have been the Marshall’s birthday?” she paused to think about it for a bit, then waved her hand,  “At any rate, we had lots of extra dirty dishes and pots and pans from prepping for it. So I was working late, I was still washing up so everything would be clean for the next day.  And I caught Eli sneaking into the kitchen.  It was after hours, he didn’t have any business being there.”

“What was he doing?”

“Trying to steal food rations, of course.”

“What’s a ration gramma?”  Joshua had finally finished swallowing his mouthful of cookie. “Does it taste good?”

“No silly, a ration is cardboard.”  Lindsay said.

“I think you’re thinking of ration _cards_ dear.”  Elena moved some dishes into the sink to soak and wiped down the counters.  “I’m not quite sure how to explain it to you children so that you can understand it. Have you ever been hungry?”

Joshua nodded, “I’m hungry right now.”

Elena laughed.  “You can’t be hungry, you just ate a cookie!”

“Am so hungry.”  Joshua nodded, “I could eat another.” He looked up at the top of the fridge wistfully, then back at his grandmother.

She ruffled his hair.  “No you scamp. You’ll spoil your dinner.  And I don’t mean hungry like ‘I _want_ to eat.”  I mean hungry like, ‘I _have_ to eat, because if I don’t I won’t have enough energy to walk or run or play or do my schoolwork.’  Have you ever gone a whole day without eating?  Two days?  Three days? _That’s_ what I mean by hunger.  When there’s no food to eat.  Not when there’s no food that you _want_ to eat.  But when there’s just plain no food.”

“No food?”  Both of the grandchildren echoed her, horrified.

“No food at all.”  Elena nodded.  She let that sink in for a while, while she checked the turkey in the oven.  Then she slipped the stuffing in next to it.  She knew it was hard to imagine, standing there in her warm kitchen, the smell of Thanksgiving dinner wafting through the air. Some days her own childhood didn’t seem like it could have happened, it was so long ago and far away.

“But how could there be no food? People would die!”  Lindsay finally cried out.

“Exactly.”  Elena nodded.

“But if you were hungry, why couldn’t you just go to the grocery store and buy more food?” Joshua asked.

“Because there wasn’t any food in the grocery stores Joshua.  When the Kaiju came, they disrupted everything. When they attacked a city they destroyed roads and bridges and harbors and airports, which made it harder to ship food from one place to another. And everything about the Kaiju was toxic, including their pee and their poop and their blood. So when they came onto land, they left a trail of destruction and poison behind them that got into the water and the soil, which meant that anywhere a Kaiju had walked or swam might be dangerous for humans.

Before the War we’d had plenty to eat.  California was the number one food producing state in the United States.  More than half the fruits, vegetables, and nuts that we ate were grown here.   But after three Kaiju attacks in six years, much of the farmland in Southern California was contaminated and unfit for farming.  And some of the richest fishing grounds in the Pacific Ocean were also suspected of being contaminated.  And suddenly there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone.”

“But there’s lots of farms here in Southern California grams.  We drive by them all the time.” Lindsay said.

“Yes, that’s true. But it’s been over fifty years since K-Day.  After the War ended, scientists started working on the problem of how to neutralize the Kaiju toxins and clean up all the contaminated soil and water that that we could grow food again. The farmers here have worked hard for decades to clean up the damage done by the Kaiju War.  But when I was a girl, only a little older than you, lots of people went hungry. They were developing diseases like rickets and scurvy and actually dying of starvation before the government finally stepped in and started rationing food so that everyone had something to eat.”

“So what’s a ration?”  Joshua asked, trying to imagine a past without enough to eat.

“A ration is when you take all the food you have available, and divide it between all the people that you need to feed, so that everybody gets a fair share.  Sort of like how there are going to be seven of us for dinner today, and we’ll cut the pie so that everyone gets the same size slice. The food that each person is allowed is called their ration.  Your ration for a week might be so many pounds of meat and so many pounds of vegetables and so many pounds of grain.”

“But why did they have to have rationing?”  Joshua wanted to know.

 “Well, there were food riots.  Bad ones.  And people were getting hurt.  I remember that one of my grandmother’s friends was trampled to death at the grocery store one day because there was a rumor that they’d gotten in a shipment of meat and people stampeded trying to get to it before they sold out.  That’s why we had food rationing.  People were dying just trying to get enough to eat. And the government had to do something to stop it before even more people got hurt.

So they encouraged people to grow Victory Gardens again, to raise their own food.   People gardened in their front yard, in their back yards, in containers on their decks.   Lots of the families in our neighborhood kept chickens, so we had plenty of fresh eggs.  We canned and dried what we could to have food during the winter months.  And we shared with our neighbors.  Hoarding food was a crime.”

“A crime?  Just having food?”

“Well, having _too much_ food.  Your food ration was all you were allowed to eat.  If you had lots of extra food in your house, even if you grew it yourself, you were expected to share it with your neighbors.”

“That seems kinda harsh to me.”  Lindsay sniffed.

“War is always harsh dear.  That’s why I’m so grateful you children have grown up in a better world and have never known hunger.”

Elena started pulling the things out of the cabinets for her chocolate cake recipe.  Her daughter went to the fridge to get the cold ingredients for her. Ginny pulled her head out of the fridge, looking over the door at her mother, “Mom, we’re out of eggs.”

Elena waved her hand, “That’s OK, this cake recipe doesn’t need them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m making one of my old ones, from when we had rationing during the War Years.”

“Wait, isn’t this the cake you made every year for my birthday?”

“The very same one.”

“I never knew the recipe.  You mean there’s no eggs in it?”

“No eggs and no butter.  We couldn’t always get the ingredients we needed during the War Years.  So I dug up some old recipes from the Great Depression.  This is one of them.”

“The Great Depression?  You mean the one back in the 1930s?”  Lindsay was proud of herself for remember the dates, it had been a while since her 20th century history class.

“The very same one Lindsay.  When I was in culinary school, one of the classes I took was on creative cooking.  The instructor was a bit of a history buff.  We weren’t rationing yet, but we were having more and more trouble getting some ingredients and she could see that it was coming.  So she dug up all these old recipes from the Depression and when they had rationing during World War I and World War II and had us try them. Those old time cooks got really creative. When they couldn’t get the ingredients they needed, they had to find something to substitute.  It’s a good thing I took that class too, because I ended up using a lot of what I learned when I was a cook during the War Years.”

Ginny Strong handed her daughter the beater to lick.  “Here, try your grandmother’s cake.  She used to make this for me for my birthday every year.”

“Really?”  Lindsay looked skeptical as she wiped the batter off the beater with her finger.  She stuck her finger in her mouth, and then licked off every scrap of batter.

“Good huh?”  Ginny smiled at her daughter.  Lindsay nodded.

“You’d be surprised at the sorts of tasty meals you can cook when you have to get creative with ingredients.”  Elena said.

“What sorts of things were rationed during the War years mom?”

“Well, wheat was in short supply.  At some points during the War you couldn’t even get it at all.  We all baked War bread, which used oats and cornmeal to stretch the wheat.  That way we could still have bread, but it used less wheat flour.  Or you might bake with half spelt and half wheat.  Luckily a couple of years before the Kaiju came there had been a boom in people experimenting with gluten-free baking, so cooks had figured out all sorts of ways to bake that didn’t require wheat.  We couldn’t always get sugar, so people used honey or corn syrup or molasses as sweeteners.

Beef was hard to come by, and fish too.  Because the Kaiju came through the Breach in the Pacific Ocean, a lot of the fishing fleets were afraid to fish near there because it was dangerous.  And people were suspicious that the waters had been contaminated.  For proteins people ate more eggs and dairy, more beans and peas, and the occasional chicken.  Almost everyone kept a chicken or two.  We ate a lot of root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, rutabagas, parsnips and turnips because they were easier to store.

The hardest thing to find was fruit.  Apples were still available, but fruits that grew in California, like oranges, lemons, strawberries and grapes were hard to find.  Raisins were almost impossible to find.  Nuts were in short supply too. California grew a lot of almonds and walnuts. And I went years without seeing pistachios.

But we have plenty to eat now.  And I’m thankful for that.”

***

Finally everything was cooked to perfection.  Lindsay and Joshua set the table while Elena and Ginny hauled dish after dish out to the big oval table in the dining room.  There were pickles and cheeses, fruit salad, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes cooked with brown sugar and pecans, mashed potatoes with garlic, oyster stuffing and hot fresh rolls.  And their son’s guest had brought a sauce of fresh cranberries with oranges. The family arranged themselves around the table, grampa Eli, their son Boyd and his boyfriend Chris, and their daughter Ginny and her two children Lindsay and Joshua.  Elena was just setting the platter with the turkey in front of her husband to carve when a quiet mechanical chirp sounded from under the table.

“I see someone has forgotten about the house rule?” she said, looking straight at Joshua.  “Go get me the basket.” 

Joshua hopped out of his seat and went into the other room, coming back with a large basket which he handed to his grandmother.  She looked at him.  And he dug a game console out of his pocket and put it into the basket.   Elena held the basket out towards Lindsay, who took off her wristband and placed it into the basket.  Elena waited, still holding the basket towards her granddaughter, until she finally tipped her head to the side and removed a small ear bud and placed it in the basket. “Thank you.”

Turning towards their guest, Elena said, “I hope Boyd warned you about our family tradition?”  Chris shook his head. “We don’t allow tech at the table.  We started it when Boyd and Ginny were little, because there was too much surfing and texting and game playing at the dinner table.  So the house rule is, all tech goes in the basket until the meal is over.  That way, we can enjoy a family meal, without being distracted by our tech toys.”

Chris nodded and took off his wristband and ear bud and placed them in the basket.  Elena looked at him, still holding the basket out in front of her.  “Those glasses might be antique tech, but I know HUD glasses when I see them.  Into the basket young man.”

“Oh!”  Chris was flustered.  “I forgot I was wearing them. I surprised you noticed.  Most people don’t realize what they are.”

“Well, I’m old enough to remember when they first came out.”  Elena shrugged, then put the basket on the sideboard and took her seat next to her husband and took his hand.  Everyone around the table joined hands and bowed their heads.

“Dear Lord,” Eli intoned, “We are grateful for the bounty before us.  And for having friends and family here to share it with.  This year I am grateful, as always, for my good health, for my wife Elena, and for my family.  Joshua?”

“This year I’m grateful for my puppy.  And for getting good grades in school. And I’m grateful for cookies.”  There were chuckles from around the table.  “And that gramma is such a good cook.” 

“This year I’m grateful for my new job, and that this is my weekend to have my children.”  Ginny squeezed her children’s hands. “And that we got to spend this day with family.”  She smiled across the table at her brother.  She didn’t see him as often as she’d like, not since he’d moved to Northern California.

Lindsay spoke next, “I’m grateful for my new school, and the new friends that I’ve made this year.  And for my awesome grandparents and the coolest uncles ever.”

“Thank you Lindsay, I’ll try to live up to that.”  Boyd grinned at his niece.  “I’m grateful for my parents and my sister and my niece and nephew, and that my partner Chris was able to join us today and finally get to meet you all.”

Elena squeezed Chris’ hand.  “You’re next.”

Chris swallowed, and looked at Boyd before he started speaking.  “I’m grateful for Eli and Elena for welcoming me into their home today.  And I’m grateful for Boyd, who has agreed to be my husband.”

“What?”  Ginny shrieked.  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“We just did!”  Boyd laughed.

“That’s wonderful news!”  Elena leaned over and kissed Chris’s cheek, then got up and hugged her son.  “Just one more thing to be grateful for today.”  She smiled.

“We were hoping Boyd would find someone to make him happy.” Eli leaned across the table and shook Chris’s hand, beaming.  “Welcome to the family Chris.”

“Thank you sir.”

Elena sat down and took her husband and Chris’s hands again.  “Lord, I have so much to be grateful for this year.  I am blessed to be surrounded by my family today.  Thank you for my new son-in-law.  And for the health of our family.  Thank you for the bounty before us. And keep and bless those who gave their lives protecting us from the Kaiju, so that we could live to see this day.  Amen.”

As Eli started carving slices off the turkey, Joshua turned to his grandmother and said, “You say that every year Gramma.  Why?  Weren’t the Kaiju just like giant dinosaurs?”

“No dear, they most certainly were not.  They were much, much worse.”

“Did you ever see a Kaiju gramma?”

“No, thank God.  I only saw them on television and that was enough for me!”  Elena was a bit sharp with her grandson.  Like dinosaurs indeed!  The Kaiju had been a daily source of terror for her during her teenage years.

“Mother, I know you don’t talk about it, but Joshua is studying the PPDC in school this year.  They just started their unit on the Kaiju War, and it might be good to hear some stories from someone who actually lived through it.”

“It’s not that I don’t like to talk about it, it’s just that it was a terrible time and I don’t like to dwell on it.  But I suppose I could tell some stories about when I was younger.”  She ate a couple of bites of food, then started talking.

“When I was a little girl we lived in the suburbs of San Francisco in Bayview.  I was there in 2014 on K-Day, when Trespasser attacked the city.  It was a Thursday, I remember because I had piano lessons on Thursdays and I was practicing my scales in the morning.

At first we didn’t know it was a Kaiju.  The first thing that happened was an earthquake.  We still don’t know if the Breach opening caused it or if it was caused by Trespasser walking into San Francisco bay. 

It was a bad earthquake.   At first the house started shaking, I remember watching the hammers jumping off the wires inside the piano.  I was terrified.  My mother grabbed me and pulled me under a table.  Things were falling off shelves and pictures were shaking off the walls. When the shaking stopped, we all ran outside.  We waited at the park at the end of the block for my father to come home.  And we listened to the news on the radio that someone had brought with them.

When Trespasser rose out of the harbor, nobody knew what it was, or what to think.  We’d never seen anything like it before.  The reporters didn’t know what to call it.  It was like something out of a movie or TV show. The Coast Guard and Army tried to stop it. Fighter jets were scrambled from Travis Air Force Base.  It took tanks, jets, and missiles six days to kill that first Kaiju.  And it destroyed three cities in the process.   San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento were in ruins.

So no Joshua, a Kaiju is not just like a dinosaur.

Tens of thousands of lives were lost. And not everyone died in the attacks.  My best friend was just walking around her neighborhood, looking at the destruction while her family tried to salvage some things from their house.  And she touched a puddle of Kaiju blood.  Back then, we’d never seen it before.  Nobody had any idea it was toxic.  She died from Kaiju Blue a month later. A lot of people died of Kaiju Blue before they figured out what caused it.  And even after they figured out the cause, it was years before they figured out how to treat it.  And as you know, we still can only cure it if the disease is in the very early stages. Kaiju Blue can still be fatal if you wait too long to treat it.

After the attack, most of the city was left in ruins.  Hundreds of buildings were damaged in the earthquake and hundreds more when Trespasser made his way up the coast.  The drinking water supply was polluted, and a large part of the coastline was either toxic or radioactive.  Our house was still standing, but the city wasn’t safe anymore.   If you could afford it, you got out while they tried to rebuild the city. 

When my father found us that first night, he packed us into the car with as much as we could carry and we fled the city.   So we were already far away when the nuclear bombs went off.  My father moved the family to Los Angeles. I was a sophomore in high school and I had to make all new friends. But we adjusted.  And we were just grateful to be alive.

I was taking classes at Le Cordon Bleu when Yamarishi attacked Los Angeles in October.  I already knew I wanted to be a chef, so after that attack  I moved to San Diego to go to Culinary School. I was living in San Diego when Clawhook attacked in July 2019.”

“Gramma, _three_ Kaiju attacks?” Lindsay stared at her, her eyes wide with horror.

“Yes dear.  And after surviving three Kaiju attacks in three different cities, I didn’t think twice about what I wanted to do when I graduated from Culinary School.  I was going to join the PPDC. They needed cooks, I needed a job.  And if Kaiju were going to keep following me around, I wanted to be close to the Rangers and Jaegers that were going to fight them.” Elena stopped to take a sip of her wine.   “By that point I was starting to feel a little cursed.  It seemed like every time I moved, there was another Kaiju attack.”

"And when you got to Anchorage…”  Chris said, knowing what the answer was going to be.

“Knifehead attacked in 2020.”

“Oh mother, you never told me!”  Ginny exclaimed.

“I don’t really like to talk about it much.  Those were dark times.  I try not to think about them much.  The only good thing that came out of the War years was meeting Eli.”  She smiled at her husband.  “And of course that meant I got to have you children.” 

“So grampa..”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full Joshua.” 

Joshua chewed and swallowed.  “Gramma says you were in the Army?”

“If by the Army you mean the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, yes I was.  That’s where I met your gramma.”  He reached across the table and gave her hand an affectionate squeeze.  Elena smiled at him, and he picked up her hand and kissed the back of it.  “We met when we were both at the Anchorage Shatterdome.”

“What did you do?  Were you a Ranger?  Did you get to kill any Kaiju?”  Joshua gazed at him with adoring eyes.

Eli laughed.  “No, not everyone could be a Ranger.  But I was a Jaeger mechanic, so my job was helping the Rangers stay in the field by keeping their Jaegers running.”

“Cool!”  Joshua grinned.

“Did you work on _Gipsy Danger_ Mr. Strong?”  Chris asked. It was his first time meeting his partner’s parents in person, and he wasn’t quite sure what to talk about with them.

“No, I was assigned to one of the other Mark-3s, _Chrome Brutus_. I was assigned to The _Brute_ when I first got to Anchorage, transferred to Hong Kong with her, and stayed with her until the bitter end.  When she was destroyed, I worked in the Shatterdome machine shop until the end of the War.”

“That’s the Canadian Jaeger, wasn’t it?  Who were the pilots?  Was that Flint and Amarok?”  Chris asked.

“Yep, she was jockeyed by Ilisapie Flint and Zeke Amarok.  I’m surprised you know that.  Not many of you young folks born after the War remember the Jaegers or their pilots.”  Eli nodded his approval.

“My father is a history professor.  I grew up hearing all about the War Years.  I was raised on tales of the PPDC, Jaegers, and Kaiju.  It was his specialty.  The next time you come up to visit Boyd and I we’ll have to arrange a dinner so you can meet him.  Dad really loves the chance to interview PPDC veterans.”

“Interview?  Well, I don’t know what I could tell him that he’d be interested in.  I was just a mechanic.  Elena was a cook. Not very exciting work.”

“Oh, trust me, he’d be interested in any stories you wanted to tell him.  Dad’s always interviewing someone or other. He says he’s going to write a book when he retires. He’s fascinated about anything to do with the War, or even the pre-War years.”

“In that case Chris, you have _got_ to see the car that dad has out in the garage.  It’s my grandfather’s old Mustang.”

Chris sat up in his chair.  “Are you serious?  You’ve got a pre-War Mustang?”

Eli nodded, “It was my father’s.  It’s a 2014.”

Chris whistled.  “That’s the last year with the all steel chassis. Oh my god, that’s a classic.”

Eli smiled, glad to see that his son’s partner shared the family love of classic cars.  Boyd had chosen well this time. 

“But how is that even possible? I thought back in the day everyone had to donate their cars to the War effort?  Didn’t they all get melted down for their steel?  How do you still have one?  They’re rare as hen’s teeth.”

Eli explained, “The 2014 model year came out right before K-Day.  My father had just bought it.  When the government called for all patriots to turn in their cars so they could have steel for the War Effort, if your car was under four years old, you were allowed to keep it. Someone was smart enough to know that requiring people to donate cars while they were still making payments on them wasn’t going to be a very popular move.”

 “Wow, but I bet there was still a bit of pressure for him to turn it in once it was paid off.”

“Well, my mother _did_ give up her washer and drier for the War Effort.  She spent the entire war hauling our clothes down to the Laundromat every week with all the other patriotic wives.  The day they closed The Breach my father went out and bought her a new washer and drier to celebrate.  And yes,” Eli grinned, “that car might have spent the last couple years of the War hidden under a tarp in my father’s garage.”

“Do you drive it much?”

“Only when I can get my hands on gasoline.”

Chris put down his fork, “You mean it’s an _internal combustion_ engine?”

“Heck yeah.  The state of California hadn’t fully switched over to all electric cars yet.  That didn’t happen until a couple of years into the War.  Then we were all stuck driving around in those silly little miniature cars.”   

Boyd grinned at Chris, and the three men happily discussed cars for the rest of the meal.

***

After dinner the men helped clear the table and stack dishes in the kitchen for washing, then retired to the garage to admire Eli’s father’s Mustang and talk cars.

After they finished washing the pots and pans and loaded the dishwasher, Elena led the children to the back guest bedroom.  “Your grandfather and I were going through some old things this summer.  We moved them down from the attic and put them in here so it would be easier to sort through them.”  She opened the walk-in closet, which was full of boxes stacked on the floor, and plastic garment bags hung neatly on the closet rods.  The clear plastic tubs and plastic vacuum bags showed that most everything in the closet was in shades of grey, khaki, or navy blue.  “These are all of Eli and my uniforms from the War years.”

“Mom, why do you still have all these things?” Ginny asked, as Lindsay and Joshua walked into the closet and started nosing through the bags and boxes.  “Boyd and I used to wear some of this for Halloween when we were kids.  I can’t believe you still have all this!” Ginny opened up one of the plastic tubs and fingered the navy blue sweater inside it. “I remember this. Dad used to wear it when he did yard work when I was just a little girl. The fabric on the shoulders was always scratchy when he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder.”

“Yes, your father wore most of these as work clothes when you were little, at least until he put on some weight and outgrew them.  I was able to feed him a little better after they closed the Breach.  He was always a little too skinny during the War years.” Elena shrugged.  “We were taught not to be wasteful.” 

“Is that why you always reusing thing and wouldn’t buy us new tech when we wanted it? I always thought we were poor.”

“For a while we _were_ poor.  But even after your father and I were both working and we had enough, well, it was hard to give up the habit of being frugal after the deprivations of the War Years.”

“Oh mother, you should have said something! I was always so angry and hateful when you wouldn’t buy me something I wanted. I never realized how much I must have hurt you.”

Elena smiled at her daughter, all grown up with children of her own now.  She could see the echo of the pouting face of her child in her granddaughter’s face sometimes.  “Ginny, all teenagers go through a point where they’re hateful towards their parents.  I never took it personally.  You were always my daughter, and I have always loved you.” She smiled at Ginny.

“Gramma, can I have this?  OMG, it’s so _Joss_!” Lindsay was wearing Elena’s short Mess Dress jacket.  She turned to admire herself in the mirror hanging at the back of the closet. 

Elena turned to Ginny, confused.  Ginny laughed, “All I know it that means it’s a good thing.”

Elena shook her head, “Kids these days.”

“Was I any different when I was her age?”

“You’re right, I couldn’t understand what you were saying half the time either.”  The two older women laughed.

“Gramma!  Can I have it, please?”

“I’ll have to think about it honey, that’s my wedding dress…”

“Your wedding dress?”  Lindsay goggled at her. “No way!”

“Way.” Elena grinned at her.  “I told you your grandfather and I met when we were in the PPDC.  When they shut down the Jaeger program, they were going to RIF me.”

“RIF?”

“It means Reduction in Forces dear.  They were going to lay me off.  But Eli and I were already dating at that point. And he was getting transferred to another post.  So we had a quickie wedding so that I could transfer with him.  And yes, I wore that uniform to my wedding.  There was a War on you know.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.  Our wedding album is around here somewhere.”  Elena looked around, then spotted it in the bedroom, on top of the dresser.  “Here it is.”  She sat down on the bed and flipped through the album.

“That’s your grandfather.”  She pointed to a photo of a slender young man, standing straight and tall in his dress blues, looking a little nervous standing next to the PPDC chaplain in the small base chapel.

“He’s so skinny!”  Joshua said.

“Remember what I said about food rationing?  We were all skinny back then.  There wasn’t enough extra food for anyone to get fat.”

“Which one is you gramma?”  Lindsay leaned over, peering at the faded photos.

“This one here.”  Elena flipped the page and showed her granddaughter the photo of a slender, solemn young woman walking slowly down the aisle towards her bridegroom.  She was wearing the short military jacket her granddaughter was wearing now, with a full length skirt and cummerbund. She was carrying a simple bouquet of white roses, and smiling broadly at the camera and her future husband.

“But you didn’t have a white wedding dress?  That’s not fair.”  Lindsay said thoughtfully.  “Your wedding day is supposed to be the best day of your life.”

She flipped through the rest of the photos.  They showed photos of the happy young couple in their dress blues kissing, then ducking below an archway of drawn swords, then toasting with their friends at the short cake and punch reception that their friends had quickly arranged for them.  Elena flipped the album closed and put a hand on it.  “It was the best day of my life.  I got to marry your grandfather. It’s not the wedding that makes a good marriage, it’s the man you go home with after the ceremony. When you grandfather was transferred to Hong Kong, I got to go with him because I was his wife.”

“Hong Kong?”  Joshua exclaimed.  “You were at the Last Shatterdome?  Did you know Stacker Pentecost?” He was so excited that he was bouncing on the bed next to her. “We just learned about him last week.  He helped close the Breach with Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori and Charles Hansen.”

“Did I know The Marshall?  Oh, everybody knew The Marshall.  He was the base commander when I was in Anchorage, and again when we transferred to Hong Kong.  You might see him in the hallways, or in the Mess Hall, but I was a lowly cook, I didn’t spend much time with important men like that.”  Joshua looked disappointed.  “However, I did shake his hand once.  I have a picture of it somewhere.  We’ll have to look for that photo album.  I’m pretty sure they’re in a footlocker somewhere.”

Ginny and Lindsay dragged the two footlockers out of the closet and into the middle of the room.  Elena opened one and started stacking the contents on the bed.  There were old uniforms, dog tags, all manner of ephemera.  Elena unpacked carefully folded posters, PPDC manuals, used ration books, publicity photos of the various Jaegers and their pilots, and stacks of old magazines and clippings about the War effort.

“Ah, here they are.”  She pulled several photo albums out of the bottom of the footlocker.

“What’s this gramma?”  Joshua held something up.

Elena took a look at the small plastic box that Joshua was holding up and examined it.  Inside was a dark grey curved object on a little stand.  “ _That_ is a Kaiju scale.”

“Is it safe?”  Ginny asked.  Elena had just been talking about how Kaiju were toxic. 

“Eli checked with Medical when he found it.  It won’t hurt you.  And he got permission from the Commander to keep it before he brought it home.  So it’s not illegal.”

“Where did you ever get such a thing?” Ginny asked.

“Your father was cleaning off one of the Jaegers one day and he found it caught in the knuckles.  _Chrome Brutus_ had been punching Kaiju, and some of the scales from the beast had gotten embedded in her knuckles.”

“Can I take it in to Show and Tell?”

“Joshua, why don’t you take your grandmother instead?”

“Because a Kaiju scale is cooler.”  Ginny frowned at her son.  “But mom, it is!  Everyone has a grandmother, but nobody at school has a Kaiju scale!”

“I’m sure that’s true.  But not everyone has a grandmother who was in the PPDC.  Mom, would you mind?  I can arrange it with his teacher.”

“I’d be delighted Ginny.  I think the young people should know what happened during the War.  We should never forget.”

Elena carried the stack of photo albums into the living room.  She sat on the couch with one grandchild on either side.  Ginny stood behind the couch, leaning over her shoulder. Elena flipped through the first album until she found the page she was looking for.  “This one here.”  Elena pointed.  It was a photo from her promotion to Chief Cook, just before they’d closed the Anchorage Shatterdome.  She was receiving her rank pins from The Marshall.

“Oh my God gramma!  You _did_ know Stacker Pentecost?”  Joshua was bouncing he was so excited,

“Well, everyone knew The Marshall.  He was The Marshall…”

“But you touched him!  You shook his hand!”  There was awe on his face.  “I can’t believe you actually touched his hand.  You have to come for Show and Tell now!”

“Am I cooler than a Kaiju scale?” Elena teased him.

“Almost.”  Joshua grinned at her mischievously.

Ginny flipped through another album.  It was full of photos of cities after Kaiju attacks.  “Why do you have all these photos mom?  I can’t believe you walked around the city after an attack taking photos.” 

“Well, it was important to me to record it.  I was keenly aware that I was a witness to history.  And I had a new camera phone, so I wanted to use it.  I was careful not to go anywhere dangerous.  But it was easy enough to go into a skyscraper that wasn’t damaged and take some photos of the destruction.  And my cousins from out of state didn’t believe what they were seeing on the television.  So I took pictures and sent them to them to prove it.  For a while there I was on the student newspaper so that I could keep my Tech.  Since I was part of the press, I got a waiver to keep my computer and my phone.

And I was grateful that I had the technology to do it. I was lucky that my parents bought that phone when they did.  Once they started the Jaeger program, nobody got new phones, game consoles or electronic toys or anything that wasn’t deemed a necessity.  We diverted all our technology, all the computer chips, all the computers, all the metal that we could into the War Effort.  Building the Jaegers consumed a lot of resources, it took a lot of money and a lot of people to build them as quickly as they did.”

“I can’t believe you kept these all these years.”  Ginny fingered the tall stack of photo albums.

“I wanted to remember what we were fighting for in the PPDC.  When I die, they’re getting willed to the Kaiju History Museum in Los Angeles.”  She waved back towards the bedroom.  “In fact, the last time we were there I spoke to the curator.  She’s interested in anything we’re willing to donate.  I think we’ll go ahead and give them most of the uniforms as soon as we’re done sorting through them.  I want to make sure they’re all clean and have the proper patches and insignia before I take them in.  And I think I can give them some of the posters too.  But I’ll hold onto the photo albums for now.”  She patted the album in her lap.

“The Kaiju War was a terrible time.  But it was also a time when the entire world pulled together to work for the good of all mankind.  And that’s something that really had never happened before in human history. 

So in some ways, the Kaiju war was one of our greatest triumphs. During the War years we weren’t American or Canadian or Japanese or Chinese or Russian or German.  We were _people_ , and that was all that really mattered.  And we should never forget that.”

**Author's Note:**

> When I was imagining the cast of background characters that I wanted to write about in this series, there was always going to be a cook, someone to provide a different point of view of the scenes in the Mess Hall. That little snippet of conversation between Raleigh and Chuck really intrigued me. There are always so many ways that wartime rationing can affect people. So I wanted to write a story about the food situation during the Kaiju War. My cook's story was always going to be a flashback, telling her children or grandchildren about her days in the PPDC when she was younger. Then, while driving in the car this fall, admiring the fall foliage, I started thinking that I might want to write a Thanksgiving story. And writing about a cook and food at Thanksgiving seemed like the perfect fit.
> 
> While I am thankful for readers, readers who leave kudos (or even better comments) are food for a writer’s soul. 
> 
> When you read a story you like anywhere on the internet, it would be wonderful if you could get in the habit of letting the writers know that you liked their efforts. We all need encouragement to keep writing. It takes so little effort to say "Thank you." but it makes the world a nicer place for everyone.


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